


Among the Offerings

by jackieomfg



Category: Critical Role (Web Series), Dungeons & Dragons (Roleplaying Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Dark Magic, F/M, Fantasy, Feels, Gen, Horror, Possible Spoilers, Siblings, Undead, Vax'ildan Feels, Whitestone, Zombies, critical role au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-10
Updated: 2017-01-02
Packaged: 2018-09-07 16:51:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 10
Words: 22,087
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8808508
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jackieomfg/pseuds/jackieomfg
Summary: Vox Machina's liberation of the city of Whitestone from the clutches of Lord & Lady Briarwood was hard-won.  Their final battle was peppered with close calls and even near death.  What if fate had not favored our band of intrepid adventurers?





	1. The Descent

Lady Briarwood’s knees buckled onto the stone floor of the platform erected in the center of the pit atop the ancient ziggurat beneath Castle Whitestone. Clutching the wound delivered to her by the city’s heir apparent, and seething with desperation, she glared at those gathered on the outer roof of the chamber with eyes like that of a caged animal – one with nothing left to lose. She watched as Vex’ahlia, still masquerading as Cassandra de Rolo under a _seeming_ spell, torpedoed through the air with her rope stretched taut between her hands. Watching the shape of her ward barrel towards her, something in Delilah broke. The injured wizard had had enough of the charades and inane interruptions. She fixed her kohl-lined gaze on the oncoming ranger and defiantly lifted her arm while extending her pointer finger – adorned in delicate, hinged silver armor, carved with fine, macabre detail – in Vex’s direction. With lethal focus, she began to channel her knowledge of arcane death in its purest and most vengeful form. Harnessing the very darkness around her, inky wisps of shadow coiled and braided themselves around the tip of her armored finger. The battered and nearly broken necromancer’s brow furrowed in concentration as the dark vapor gathered together into a single dark spark that swelled and flickered at her fingertip.

To Vex, the sight of Delilah’s armored pointer aimed in her direction immediately took her mind hostage. It was a point of recognition that filled the ranger with a sinking, familiar dread. She had come to know (and though she would never admit it openly, she had also come to fear) the power of that damned finger. The women’s eyes met and Vex saw in Delilah’s expression a succinct hatred. In that moment, Delilah was resolute on one thing: she would teach not only Vex’ahlia, but the rest of Vox Machina as well, a hard-earned lesson in loss.

 _“For you, Sylas!”_ Delilah hissed to herself through clenched teeth as the spark exploded, releasing from it a single black beam that streaked across the void of the chamber.

The ray of necromagic shot across the chamber and struck the center of Vex’s chest. She did her best to withhold whatever was left of her existence to keep her body aloft, but she could feel Delilah’s curse begin to worm its way through her body. Vex’s eyes rolled back as the joints of her body went slack, more than forty feet above the floor of the pit. She sighed weakly and allowed a last bit of air escape past her lips as she plummeted towards the abyss below. Those standing on the roof rushed to the edge and watched helplessly as Vex’s body sank below the horizon. Delilah briefly looked at her finger with a fleeting glance of satisfaction, but almost immediately thereafter, her attention returned to the black sphere before her. She watched as the once-motionless sphere suddenly began to spin in place. Its movement seemed only traceable thanks to faint reflections of light on the blood that coated its obsidian surface. A brief bit of hope caused Delilah to shiver as she watched the levitating object continue to spin, faster and faster. She once again had hope that this was a sign of her unseen patron’s benevolence.

“Come on! Come on!” she pleaded emphatically to herself. Her satisfaction was short lived though, as right before her eyes, the spinning orb shrunk in the flash of an instant to nothing more than a tiny dark speck floating in midair, no bigger than the size of a small coin. Delilah kneeled there, frozen in disbelief, as the hundreds of slowly writhing, moaning interlocked bodies across the walls of the chamber began to fall still and silent. Trembling and desperate, Delilah cupped her hands beneath the shrunken sphere and held them there as she pleaded into the void.

“No, no, no! It can’t be too soon. Please! Please… please.”

Her eyes darted around for a more promising sign, but found only the darkness of the underground cavern around her. The bodies fixed to the chamber walls were now motionless once more. Delilah looked as the glistening gash in her forearm. She stared at it, lost in the dark crimson droplets draining out of the wound. Studying it closer, she could see the drips vibrate, as if something nearby was trying to pull the liquid away from her wrist. She looked back up at the orb once more and honed in on its surface. Gone was the blood she had offered it only moments ago. The heat of anticipation went deathly cold as realization set in.

Wracked with panic, Percy, Vax’ildan, Pike, and Keyleth clamored together at the edge of the roof and frantically searched the darkness below for their fallen comrade. After a few moments of searching, Vax spotted a set of leather-clad limbs spread out from beneath his familiar Cloak of Elvenkind, though the rest of the body was otherwise obscured from view. Vax leaped from the edge of the chamber wall without a word uttered to the others. He dove down into the blackness, and landed with desperate grace. As his boots crashed against the earthen floor, Pike balanced herself on the edge of the roof and shuddered, both out of unsteadiness and of what possibilities awaited them below. She watched as Vax rushed to the motionless dark mound near the foot of the platform and quickly took up her holy symbol. Shivering, she clutched it to her breastplate with one hand while extending the other down in the direction of the body. The metal talisman shimmered with radiant energy as she whispered a sacred invocation to Sarenrae. The word left her mouth as a swirling wisp of shimmering, golden vapor that floated and gathered into the young cleric’s open palm. Something was amiss though: Pike felt a weakness in the connection between her and the divine energy of her goddess. She watched as the vapor flickered briefly in the palm of her hand before it was quickly snatched away by some unseen force. Robbed of the spell, Pike looked down at her chest and opened her hand to find her holy symbol no longer lit.  
  
Bewildered, she took a moment to focus, but still, her connection seemed stifled, and the more focus she tried to pour into contacting her divine resource, the more distant they felt.

“Percy, something isn’t right!”

Pike looked up from her symbol and, as she turned to Percy, her expression sunk with unexpected dread. She watched as her friend’s form began to hiss and steam with the dense, coal black smoke her companions had warned her about. As the smoke leaked out from beneath Percy’s jacket and up from his collar, he coolly slipped his beaked mask down over his face and made sure to keep his eyes on Lady Briarwood.

“Percy?”

Ignoring Pike, he loaded another bullet into Bad News as a deep, familiar voice stirred within him: _**“Nowwww. Doooo iiit! Dooooo iiit!”** _

Obediently, he bent down and balanced the long, cannon-like weapon with an eerily calm focus. He lowered his head, peered through the scope that rested on top of the barrel, but as he honed in on Lady Briarwood, an unexpected moment of hesitation came over him. His finger quivered as it hovered his just over the trigger, and though the smoke gathered around his periphery, he began to slightly adjust his aim. The booming sound of Bad News echoed from high above! Vax continued to race to the aid of his sister, unfazed by the sound of gunfire, as the others watched Percy’s bullet collide into Lady Briarwood’s right shoulder. Her body spun around and flailed in a swirling vortex of fine robes, blood, and black powder. Delilah’s body stumbled backwards down the steps of the podium out of sight.

Vax rushed to his sister’s body and felt the strain on his legs from the jump sink in as he moved closer. He felt his vision start to blur, his heart race, and his stomach drop as he closed the gap between them. His legs gave way and commanded him to kneel at beside the body. Without regard for the garment’s condition, he threw off the cloak. Beneath it laid his worst fear made flesh. It was indeed his beloved Vex’ahlia beneath the cloak, face down and motionless in the carved out area of the chamber floor. He paused for a moment and felt his body sink deeper against the floor beside her. His hand shook uncontrollably as it hovered above his sister’s cheek. He quickly surveyed her body as clearly as his dazed state would allow: he took in its position and its stillness. Her back was completely still. He hesitated to turn her over, for fear of what he might find. His fingers – often controlled and sturdy – trembled as they gently brushed away pieces of hair that further obscured her face from him.

_She’s just out of it that’s all. I… I can fix this! It’s not too late._

He found resistance from a few strands that had gathered in the corner of her mouth. As he continued to brush the hair back, the strands carried with them thin, uneven streaks of fresh blood across her exposed cheek. Vax looked around and noticed that blood that had also begun to trickle out of her mouth and pool beneath her other cheek, creating a halo of crimson on the floor beneath them that quickly slithered through the cracks in the ground towards his knees. Vax did his best to stifle his panic but as he finally drummed the courage to turn her over, the vacant, glassy expression that met him shattered his composure.

“No! Nononono! Vex? No, Vex, wake up! Goddammit, **VEX!** ”

He quickly pulled Vex’s body closer, as if to guard her from the empty voyeurism of the beings decorating the walls surrounding them. Her skin was pallid at a glance and cooler to the touch. A latticework of long dark veins had now begun to frame her face. Her eyes were open slits, looking up not at her brother, but beyond him. Vax cradled her with one arm, and with the other, he pulled out a flask, revealing a potion of Greater Healing. He tore the cork out with his teeth in one determined bite and, as gently as he could in his frantic state, lifted her head onto his lap. He put the glass rim against her lips and began to empty its contents into her mouth. He struggled to control his trembling hands, but despite the shock, was mindful enough to know that the potion was far too precious to spill. He dutifully watched the amber colored liquid pour into Vex’s mouth. Sweat gathered in the creases of his brow as he watched and waited, and silently pleaded with Sarenrae to guide his sister back to him safely. A moment passed. A second moment passed. Time seemed to crawl as she lay there in his lap, her eyes trapped behind flaccid eyelids locked onto the ceiling above. A third moment passed. His body tensed up even more as he watched the ruddy combination of potion and blood rise and leak out of her open mouth, down her pale cheek, past her ears, where it gathered in her tousled soft black hair.

“You’ve got to swallow! Please, Vex’ahlia! You’ve got to do this!” Vax could feel the stream of potion begin to soak into his sleeve. “You can’t leave us here, Vex’ahlia! I won’t let you! Get up, get up!”

Vax’s eyes swelled as he tried, in vain, to suppress inevitable tears. In the distance, he could hear the muffled sounds of Trinket furiously bang and claw at the chamber door down the corridor just a few yards away from him. Vax tuned the bear’s woeful sounds out as he continued to beg his sister.

“Please, you can’t leave me here like this! Damn you! Please!” Vex’s eyes remained open, unfazed by both the cries of her bear and her brother. Vax fell silent as he began to crumble onto his sister’s unmoving body. He gently kneeled down, pressed his cheek against hers and between them he wept. Desperate, he whispered to her: “Bloody wake up! Please, Vex’ahlia, please!”

Grog sheathed his warhammer and jumped down into the chamber, followed by Scanlan – who vaulted off the roof with remarkable agility – and finally Keyleth. The trio raced to the center of the pit where, in the low light, they could see Vax’s body slumped over, shielding most of his sister’s body from sight. Keyleth stopped and watched Scanlan and Grog continue to charge ahead.

“Vex?” she whimpered to herself in disbelief.

Vax did his best to quickly wipe the ichor from her face as the sound of Grog’s heavy, stomping footsteps rumbled behind him. “We’re getting you out of here!”

Vax scooped his sister’s body up off the ground and rose to his feet just as Grog arrived. Bereft, he marched towards his companions on the ground, his face no longer loose with grief but tense with grave determination. His eyes, though swollen and red, recalled an emptiness he had seen in his own sister’s eyes just moments prior. Both Grog and Scanlan greeted Vax with mouths parted in shock. Behind them, Keyleth clasped her hands across her mouth as tears instantly began to stream down her freckled cheeks. Pike and Percy watched helplessly from above.

“Take her,” Vax commanded Grog as he handed his sister’s body off to him. “Get her out of here as fast as you can. I’ll be right behind you!”  
“But—“  
“You’re stronger and faster than I am, and we need to hurry! I’ll be right behind you two!”

Still wracked with disbelief, Pike maintained her focus on her once-sacred talisman. Its surface was dark and dull brass again, and had cooled considerably since she’d been able to access its warm, healing divinity only moments prior. The disconnection from Sarenrae, coupled with the horrors she had just witnessed, left the cleric in a momentary fugue.

 **“PIIIIIKKKKKEEEE!”** Grog howled from below as he bolted towards the corridor leading out of the chamber with the fallen ranger cradled in his arms.  
“I’m… I’m coming!” she answered back as she quickly looked up from her symbol and back at Percy, who was still locked in grim focus and he stared down the barrel of Bad News and watched the small black orb spin.


	2. Wyrd

Keyleth felt something stir from deep within her as she lingered in the bowels of the ceremonial chamber, a terror not just for her fallen friend, but also for what still remained. She could feel the waves of malevolent force vibrate down from the top of the stone platform. She wanted so badly just to race after Vax and hold he and his sister and comfort them and, perhaps, even heal them with any of the magic she had left. All she could do was stand and watch them pass her by. Every second in this chamber felt stagnant, and every second spent beneath Whitestone in the presence of that strange black object, Keyleth felt her intuitive connection to the outside world diminish.

The druid quickly began to understand what role her power could afford her. Keyleth looked back and watched as Vax followed Grog towards the chamber exit. His focus seemed squared solely on the safety of his sister. She took in a deep whiff of the stale air around her and did her best to center herself before moving ahead. She turned away from the entrance, from the others, and rushed to the platform to discern the nature of the orb.  

Keyleth slowed her pace as she approached the top of the platform steps.   She took each step carefully and deliberately. She puffed out her chest, straightened herself, and did her best to approach with the same gusto as she’d seen others who were braver than her pose. The air was oddly heavy at the top of the platform. Keyleth could feel the weight of years of corruption, depravity, and sickness that the Briarwoods had defiled this once holy place with, all condensed into this small area. While she had known since girlhood that her destiny was one meant for great heroism, she also knew that that heroism would come with a sacrifice. She gripped her staff as tight as she could and found comfort in the stability of the slender, familiar object. The comfort was short lived as she moved towards the small black orb, one boot in front of the other. Whether it was nerves or the air itself, she felt herself begin to almost choke on the sickly space around her. Being of sensitive heart and anxious mind, possibility after possibility flashed before her in rapid succession:

_What if this works and I save us? What if I don’t? What if I can’t stop it? What if I’m dooming us all?!_

She pressed her hand against her chest and felt her heart hammer wildly against her ribs. Keyleth’s heroic posture seemed to crumble in the presence of the mysterious black orb. She felt her jaw clatter together uncontrollably; the ultrafine, strawberry-blonde hair on her arms rose in anticipation. She tightened her grip on her breastplate at first, hoping to calm her labored breathing through force. Then, she recalled the breathing techniques Vex’ahlia had taught her, the ones that helped keep the ranger calm in times of great stress while shooting her bow and arrow.

“Just remember to _breath_ , darling!”

Keyleth focused on that, and as calmly and quickly as she could, she reached down into one of her leather pouches and pulled out one of the larger shards of the residuum glass she had collected earlier that night. The last bit of warmth lingering in the air seemed to fade as Keyleth held the shard out in front of her. She looked down at her hand and could do little to keep it from shaking. Time was against her though. She quickly lifted the shard into the air and whispered to herself aloud. “Just breath."

Keyleth watched herself bring the shard of emeraldine glass down upon the little black spot.  Its silhouette flickered in and out of focus due to the speed of its orbit. Though the residuum itself had a substantial thickness to it, as it touched the vibrating surface of the orb, it began to crack with the ease of delicate sugar brittle. Keyleth’s eyes widened as she watched the residuum begin to shatter, and though the cracks that struck out from its tip were numerous and ever multiplying, the sheer gravitational force of the orb seemed to keep the shards bound together. Keyleth could feel this pull as well. She watched as the residuum began to collapse on itself in the palm of her hand. The power of the orb’s pull caused Keyleth to grip tighter onto broken green glass. She winced as she felt the glass begin to slip through her hand. Their jagged edges tore through the skin of her palm like dozens of small razors. The muscles in her arm trembled as the rest of her body strained for control. Her blood began to drip down the residuum shards and along the way, colored every fine fissure and break, turning the once brilliant jade glass into a murky dark amber color. Keyleth could bear the pain no longer. With a hiss, she released the residuum and watched as the pieces burst apart. A galaxy of transparent green mica and droplets of druid’s blood swirled around the orb before every last bit vanished into the tiny black void. The pull of the orb showed no sign of relenting, and now little else stood between it and her. She continued to try and wrench herself from its pull as tendrils of copper hair whipped across the sides of her face – no doubt drawn in by the orb. She opened her left hand and watched as a few small, lingering chunks of bloodied glass trickled down into orb. She stumbled backwards, turned her palm upward, and shivered as she watched the blood pour from out of the gashes and float through the air like crimson ribbons. She was now tethered to the orb, and could feel weight of the dark magic she’d tried so hard to stop without fully understanding its power. Before Keyleth could run, the insatiable force of the sphere forced her wounded hand back to its surface. She frantically grabbed at her wrist to try and help pull herself away, but her strength proved too feeble against the hunger of the orb. Keyleth watched in delay, her mind unable to stop that which her body had already committed to action. She whimpered through her clenched teeth as she tried to jerk to herself free from the orb’s dark magnetism, but its force seemed too great. Keyleth opened her eyes and though she could barely see past the violent flapping of her own hair around her face, she looked down at her hands. She took in another deep breath, unable to fight against the force any longer, and remembered the vision she’d had of herself during her Aramente. She would save the world, or die trying, but either way, she would be alone. She sighed, relaxed the grip around her wrist, and began to do the only thing she knew she could do: surrender.

Keyleth choked back a scream as her hand clasped tightly around the sphere. She now had an even better understanding of the object’s terrifying hunger and speed as she felt the constant, droning sting of the orb vibrate through the meat and sinew of her palm. Its force was so strong it kept her hand bound around it. Her eyes darted upwards helplessly to her friends who stood at the top of the chamber walls. Through her hair, she could see them crying out, but the sheer intensity her grip over the orb seemed to nearly deafen her. Suddenly, her attention was brought back down to her hand as she felt a heaviness began to form from inside. She looked down watched as her fist began to harden and darken into the same obsidian shade as the orb itself. The darkness continued, crystallizing from between her fingers, up her fist and along the length of her arm like glistening black rime. Her vision began to blur and darken in her left eye, followed by a sudden dense pain that seemed to spread from within the eye itself, outwards through the rest of her skull. The cold, sharp pain slithered from her left eye all across her face, down her cheek, before creeping into her mouth. The black rime continued its course across her body with sentience, down her torso towards her feet, petrifying not only her flesh, but also the robes and armor adorning her. The blackness froze Keyleth’s mouth open in mid scream before moving up through her hair, where it petrified her copper tresses into coils of obsidian glass. Searching for comfort, for peace, Keyleth’s right eye rolled upwards past the sight of her panicked companions towards the roof of the ill-lit cave. She kept her tearful eye open and continued to stare upwards as high as she could, for as long as she could. Before the last squirming bits of darkness devoured her vision, Keyleth’s right eye twinkled with a final vision: just beyond the cave ceiling, and beyond the storm clouds that persistently loomed over Whitestone. She swore she could see it: the pale golden glow of the sun in an otherwise unblemished, perfect blue sky.

Shrieks from above echoed throughout the chamber. Vax could hear his friends cry out his beloved druid’s name in the distance. He could feel the fragments of his already sundered heart crash down into the deeper pits of his gut. What little time in this space that remained no longer seemed to hold merit. His face, still caked in the soot of battle, morphed into an expression of strange acceptance. Silhouettes of his friends fluttered around his periphery, in and out of focus, as he scanned the pit and turned his gaze up towards the roof of the chamber. He watched Pike reach out feebly with one hand and clutch her holy symbol to her breastplate with the other. Behind her, he could see Percy now standing with Bad News resting at his side, wreathed in smoke, lifting his mask up to see. Vax broke away from Grog and Scanlan and darted back to the podium, almost leaping up its narrow stone steps as rushed to the top.

_Sarenrae, no! Please, this can’t be real!_

Vax stumbled slightly as he reached the top, shocked by the effigy in obsidian black stone standing before him. As he sighed, he watched his breath escape as faint vapor. The air up here was frigid and unkind. He reached his leather-clad hand out towards the frozen tendrils of black glass coiled around the head of the stone form but could not bring himself to touch them. He slowly circled around to the front, and there before him, with arm outstretched and face staring upwards, was the body of his Keyleth. Though he could feel an unnatural icy chill radiate from the form, he removed his glove anyway and reached out to touch the statue’s glossy black flesh. He recoiled almost instantly as its surface seem to burned his fingertips at the touch. He clasped his hand to his chest and looked the form over once more. He saw her face trapped in a strange serenity, her eyes frozen open, unable to acknowledge anything beyond the ceiling of the cavern.

“What did you do, Kiki?” Vax whimpered to himself. He slipped his glove back on, unable to look away. “I love you.” He caressed her cold glassy cheek, the chill of which penetrated even the leather of his glove, and whispered one last goodbye. “I’m so _sorry_.” Vax slid his hand limply down the side of Keyleth’s face and brought his fingertips to his lips. He forced himself to look away and retreated back down the steps of the podium.


	3. Tumbling Down

Vax could hear the faint sounds of crunching rumble around him as he reached the bottom of the podium, but his mind was too removed to worry. He had one focus: to get Vex’ahlia away from of the ziggurat as quickly as possible. As he hurried down the platform, dots of green iridescence began to light up along the walls of the chamber. Scanlan looked up at the walls and was momentarily mesmerized by the lightshow on display. While he had seen similar bioluminescent phenomenon in the Underdark, those lightshows were static by comparison. These strange green lights flickered in and out all over the walls, slowly and otherworldly. Scanlan too could hear the strange crunching sounds, and as he waited for Vax, he began to connect the sounds to their teeming surroundings. The cracking of bones; the sounds of dried sinew and flesh tugging from itself; the low moans of long unused throats all began to echo through the pit like some atrophied chorus. Scanlan looked up at the writhing walls and a shiver traveled throughout his tiny form. In all of his years and his travels, never before had he seen such grotesquerie. Their still-entwined bodies began to slowly writhe and jerk together once more, just as they had during Lady Briarwood’s ritual. Now their movement seemed more intent than it had been before. The tapestry of the dead appeared restless, anxious to break free of their suspension. As Scanlan slowly began to back away from the walls, he could hear something scrape against the ground behind him. He turned and saw another body, crawling and struggling to breathe.

“What’ve you done?” Scanlan asked, staring down in disbelief at the once great-and-powerful Lady Delilah Briarwood, now crumpled near the base of the pillar.

“Me?” Lady Briarwood looked up at Scanlan and the deep crimson smear of her mouth warped into a cruel smile – the first of its kind since before her husband had been taken from her. ”It seems that the rites,” she paused and hacked up crimson into her hand. “The rites are complete! All the Whispered One needed was a sacrifice of life, of power! Looks like _you_ all gave it to him! His greatest secret will now be revealed. _Ha!_ _Hahaha!_ ” Delilah cackled through the blood still leaking from her jaw.

“Which feels worse: knowing that you weren’t powerful enough to start this yourself?” Scanlan replied with a severity that he rarely possessed. Their eyes remained locked, and Lady Briarwood’s smirk began to tremble at the certainty of her own demise as Scanlan moved closer to Lady Briarwood, drawing his long sword as he approached. “Or that you won’t be around to witness the rest of it?”

Before Lady Briarwood could reply, Scanlan quickly swiped the blade across her throat. The fineness of the blade’s edge made for little resistance against her flesh, and almost instantly, the build up of blood that had filled her throat quickly ebbed out as her head lifelessly titled onto the ground. Lady Briarwood lay before him, a mangled shell of her once elegant and formidable self, her lips still curled into a slight smile. Scanlan shook the few drops of blood from off his blade before sheathing it and, as fast as his small legs could manage, rushed back to meet the others outside of the chamber.

The surface of the dimly lit walls was now dotted with hundreds of ever-glowing flecks of green light. The faint orange glow from the few lanterns that remained lit within the ziggurat illuminated the thawing, wet flesh of limbs twisting and contorting against each other. The sound of ice chunks large and small fell against the stone floor and added a dissonant percussion to the droning chorus echoing throughout the pit. The withered right arms of those suspended against the wall began to extend. Their discolored hands reached out to those below, tearing at the air between them. The bodies also used their left arms (each amputated from the wrist down) to smash against the remaining frost that kept them bound and to push off of each other. Scanlan caught up to Vax, who seemed frozen in place by the shock of it all.

He tugged at his companion’s cloak and quipped: “I promise, when we get back to Emon, I’ll take you to the catacombs and you can marvel at all the dead bodies your gloomy self can handle, but right now it’s time to bolt!”

Vax shuddered to himself. Vax quickly leaned down and scooped Scanlan up under his arm, and the pair began to rush towards the long hall that led back to the steps of the ziggurat. Though the threshold to the corridor was only mere yards away, Vax’s keen instinct suddenly compelled him to stop. He could feel the falling small ice fragments brush past him and fall against his shoulder. In that moment, the once faint sound of moaning seemed to barrel towards him from above. Vax held Scanlan tight as he spun around and thrust them out of the way of whatever had descended upon them. They stood together and watched the body of a one of the beings from the walls above crawl towards them; face down across the stone, naked and frail, the body wheezed with each movement. Its ruddy skin was pulled tight across its bones, and decay had seemingly eaten away any distinctive features it had in life. Its brittle fingertips cracked and oozed as they scraped against the cold stone floor. The figure began to prop its upper body up off the ground, using its disfigured limb as a crutch of sorts, as it inched towards Vax and Scanlan. The figure continued to reach out at the pair with twitching, broken fingers clawing in desperation. It looked up at them and its ghoulish features were now as clear as they could be in the pit. Gone were most of the nose and both lips, lost to time and ruin. The right eye was fogged over and devoid of color, collapsed and cracked like a crushed marble. Its left eye had seemingly been dug out with little care for maintaining the intricate anatomy of the surrounding skull. It still twinkled with a constant green glow that, as it met Vax’s gaze, flared more intensely. It snarled at the pair and revealed rows of gnashed, yellowed teeth. As it opened its mouth to let out a dry, throaty howl, Vax lunged forward with Flametongue dagger in hand. He jammed the bright red blade quickly into the creature’s left eye socket and, once inside, gave the blade a hearty jerk. The head twisted around at its base with a loud snapping sound. He pulled his dagger out and noticed it took with it no blood. Instead, wisps of glowing green vapor clung to the blade’s surface. The figure lay there motionless, a trail of faint green smoke billowing out of its leathery skull. He also noticed, as he inspected the arcane blade, that the surface was ice cold to the touch, as if the fiery enchantment that the blade carried with it had somehow not been activated. Vax once again slipped into thought, trying to understand the strangeness before him.

“Nope, now’s _not_ the time to get introspective! Let’s keep going!” Scanlan urged, still dangling under his friends arm.

A similar thud sounded nearby that broke him from the isolation of his curiosity. He and Scanlan looked around as more and more heavy thuds against the ground echoed around them in increasing succession. Unclothed and unfrozen bodies fell from the chamber walls onto the floor and piled onto each other as they landed. Some appeared freshly dead, while others (like the one Vax had slain) were older and desiccated, exhumed after ages of burial. Dead of various humanoid origins – human, elf, halfing, dwarf, and even gnome – now all seemed to move as one. Uncoordinated but determined, they each worked with one another to free themselves. Corpses that had been fastened higher up on the walls smashed against the chamber floor and gathered into mounds that struggled to return to their feet, while those more recently deceased began to stagger ahead towards Vax and Scanlan. Some broke their already fragile limbs while marching. Others stomped and clawed across the still thawing limbs and innards of their undead brethren, and crushed the remains beneath their hands and feet as they descended upon the pair. Vax set Scanlan down and quickly drew his blades.

“Tell me you’ve got something to get us out of here?” Vax asked with daggers at the ready.  
Scanlan replied as he ducked behind the much taller rogue, _“I’ve got something left to get us up out of here!”_  
“Whatever it is, use it **now!** ”  
“I’m sorry, I got nervous and said that because you told me to! I’m all tapped out!”

Exasperated, Vax clicked the heels of his Boots of Haste against the ground and lunged himself into battle against the approaching bodies. _Dagger! dagger!_ He rushed forward and flung two of his three daggers into the approaching shambling bodies. Before hurling his third blade, the Dagger of Life-Stealing, realization began to sink in. He stopped and looked down at the metal clips of his Blinkback Belt and noticed that his other two blades had not yet returned to his hip. He felt himself stumble a bit, caught off guard by the weight of his own feet. He stopped and looked down and noticed the soft arcane shimmer of his boots was nowhere to be seen. He quickly looked back up and saw where his blades had landed. His Flametongue dagger had embedded itself in the chest of a younger, more recently deceased half-elf man, while near him he could see another body, that of an old rotted human woman, push forward, Dagger of Venom buried in her right cheek. He quickly observed his Dagger of Life-Stealing and noticed that it too was devoid of its once arcane luster.

“Scanlan, stay behind me!”  
“I have no intention of doing otherwise right now!”

Vax used every limb at his disposal when beating back the approaching horde, even tearing those parts that belonged to the bodies in front of him and turning them against their owners in an effort to keep the creatures at bay. He reached through their outstretched arms and tore his daggers from where they were once lodged. Scanlan backed away just a bit and kept himself at a slight distance from Vax. He was desperate to conjure some sort of inspiration to get them through to the steps to rejoin the others, but none seemed to come to him. Though Vax continued to kick and slash, the rogue’s speed and precision seemed to do little to whittle down the their numbers. Sluggishly, they grabbed and swiped from every angle, tugging at his hair; they scraped and broke their fingernails against his leather armor. Scanlan mustered up his courage and drew his long sword in one hand and his lute in the other. With a huff, he began to hack and bludgeon the hands and heads of those undead crawling across the ground around them.

“Do we have any better ideas than just hitting these things? _They just keep coming!_ ”

Scanlan raised his lute like a club, but just before he could strike again, he felt the wiry fingers of another wrap around his face from behind. Scanlan bit down on two of the fingers invading his mouth and spat the rotten pieces out, but it did little to deter the monster’s assault on him. The creature began to lift the gnome up by his neck just as another, a half-elf woman whose legs had been mangled beneath the feet of her undead consorts, began to reach up towards Scanlan’s most precious parts. A third figure shambled forward, large and broad with a near featureless face save for its permanent rictus and glowing left eye, grabbed Scanlan’s arm at the wrist, twisted it, and caused the bard to drop his sword.

 ** _“VAAAAAX!”_ ** he cried out. He watched though as the horde began to swarm around his friend, and soon, he was out of sight.


	4. Totentanz

“Scanlan, hang on! I’m coming!”  
  
Vax whipped around towards the sound of Scanlan’s voice, but found himself surrounded by an ever-growing horde of animated corpses. Though he was unable to see his friend beyond them, he managed to glance over the heads of the swarm and watched as more creatures continued to climb and fall down from the walls to join what had become a battlefield. Vax felt himself slip into a rage all his own, powered by desperation and adrenaline. He channeled the full weight of his slender body into his attacks, slamming and stabbing and screaming wildly in a berserker fit that, if Grog had been there to witness, would have no doubt made him proud!

Further away, Scanlan was still locked in the grips of three corpses with more staggering towards him. The taste of decayed meat clung to his tongue, but the panic he felt as the fingers of the half-elven creature scraped at his thighs and codpiece were of greater concern. His arm and throat were bound; he tried to wrench himself away, but with every attempt to loosen himself from their hold, the tighter they held on. Scanlan kicked wildly at the mangled creature scratching at him from below, but he couldn’t seem to shake it off.

“Scanlan… I’m… I’m coming! I’m…” Vax continued. His voice seemed to tear with every cry. He could feel his strength begin to wane almost as quickly as his rage began, despite the fury of spirit that quickly possessed him. He felt his breath shorten and could feel the briny sweat trickle down his face into his eyes with a slight burning.

Scanlan watched as the beast tugging at his arm began to raise its own handless arm like a club. It howled through its rigid, skeletal maw and with all of its undead might, prepared to bring its arm down towards Scanlan’s elbow pit. Scanlan’s eyes went wide and as he screamed out in anticipation of the pain, his cry was drowned out by a much louder sound: gunfire! Scanlan winced as he felt the warm, wet meat of the creature’s skull rain down upon his face, dripping into his already soured mouth. The hold on Scanlan’s arm relaxed as it collapsed to the ground. Another gunshot rang out, this time releasing Scanlan’s head from the fingers wrapped around his face. A second creature fell backwards, and caused Scanlan to fall back with it. He shuddered as he felt the back of his head crash through the thin, leathery flesh of the creature’s torso. Scanlan pushed himself out of the body beneath him and felt even more of the strange viscera woven through his hair. Scanlan opened his eyes and there, still crawling up his body, was the third of his attackers. Her fingers now grabbed at his tunic and with each touch, soiled the fine purple brocade of his vest. He could smell the fetid stench of her breath as she moved up his body. Scanlan was transfixed by the glow of her eye and its mysterious nature. He could feel a faint cold radiance beam out from it, a chill unlike any he had ever experienced. Frantically, he held the neck of his lute tight, raised it, but just as he made the move to bring it down upon her head, a third gunshot sounded. The half-elf’s right eye rolled back into its skull while the glow of the left dimmed, taking with it the strange cold sensation.

“Thanks, Percy! I had them though, y’know?” Scanlan yelled up to the gunslinger as he tossed the remains of the corpses off of him. He wiped his tongue against the sleeve of his tunic, then wiped twice more for good measure, before taking up his sword again and charging in to help Vax.

As Percy went to reload, he felt a small but firm hand press down onto his shoulder. He looked back and saw Pike standing there with an uneasy expression. She was a seasoned warrior in her own right, and couldn’t idly stand by as he friends were in danger – even if Sarenrae was no longer around to help them. She pulled her shield out from behind her back and began:

“Stay up here and cover me, please? I’m going down to help the others.”  
“No, I’m coming down with you!”  
“Percy! If we don’t make it out of this, you need to get your people to safety!”

Percy paused for a moment and looked into Pike’s expressive, angelic blue eyes.   He felt her gaze shoot right through him, the way that light always seemed to find a way of piercing through the dark. One friend had already fallen prey to his adversary, another devoured by dark magic, while the rest were at the mercy of his former subjects – all of this in a quest for vengeance. In a brief moment of clarity, the smoke around Percy began to subside, allowing Pike to see him at his most vulnerable.  

“Pike, I’m so sorry,” he whimpered with a shivering voice.  
Pike reached up and placed her hand into Percy’s. With a warm yet nervous smile, she looked back into his eyes. “Apologize later and just watch my back. Ok?”

Pike moved away from Percy and, with shield in hand, she teetered herself over the edge of the chamber wall. She scanned the battlefield for Vax and Scanlan, and watched as more and more corpses began to gather with the rest of their horde near the entrance to the chamber. She lifted her holy symbol and sighed as she clenched it in her hand.

“I know you’re still here with me,” she whispered to herself. She looked back at Percy one last time with that signature anxious grin crossing her face. She tucked her holy symbol back beneath her breastplate and charged along the top of the wall towards the entrance. With all of her momentum, she leaped off the edge and used her shield as cover. Though small in frame, the weight of her armor and weapons propelled her like some divine cannonball. Her plated body barreled through the dead as she plummeted towards the ground, and smashed through those who still clung to the walls. Pike tucked and rolled, allowing her shield absorb as much of the impact from the fall as possible. She quickly staggered back to her feet and took up her mace as the limbs of those she’d crushed on her descent fell around her. She shook off the bits of ice, earth, and corpse matter that dirtied her armor before she let out a battle cry fit for a Goliath and bull rushed ahead. The rattle of her armor turned the attention of the undead nearby to her, and in turn, she ferociously greeted them with crushing blows from both her mace and shield. She rushed through them, leaving in her wake a flurry of broken bodies and severed parts. Percy watched from above through his scope as Pike carved a path to Vax and Scanlan. She moved with a focus and agility he had rarely seen from her. Her strikes against them were as forceful as they were precise. Percy knelt back down, reloaded, and continued to shoot down any would-be attacks from behind on the cleric. Shots rung out above, but Pike stayed focused on the warpath she had begun. The echo of bullets ringing, colliding into bodies, just seemed to punctuate her warrior’s dance.  


	5. Feral

Grog stopped for a moment with Vex in his arms as the sounds of battle echoing from the chamber behind him caught his ear. He looked back and saw that neither Vax nor any of the others were with him, only Trinket. He knew he couldn’t leave her body behind, but the distant sounds of violence beckoned him. He anxiously took a look around for a safe spot to set her body aside and quickly settled on at the foot of a nearby pillar.

“Trinket, can you watch her?“ Grog asked the bear, still holding its mistress in his arms.

Grog looked to Trinket for an “answer”, but as he waited, he began to hear a dull, dry groaning sound beneath him. He slowly looked down at his companion and watched as her fingers slowly began to twitch.

_“Vex?”_

Grog watched as his once-fallen companion slowly began to lift her head up at the sound of her name. She replied with a long, wheezing moan. As she continued to move her head, Grog could hear the sound of fractured bones scrape together, muted by the sheath of flesh. Her dull, greyed lips quivered as they parted to reveal rows of teeth that appeared cracked and stained from the fall. Her sallow eyelids slowly began to flutter open, and where once mesmeric brown eyes rested, two milky, lusterless orbs now stared up at Grog. Her deathly stare caused even the battle-forged barbarian to shiver with uneasiness. He turned to Trinket for some kind of support but watched as the bear recoiled with a low, rumbling growl. Grog was truly at a loss; it looked like his friend, sort of, but her glare was cold and made both he and Trinket feel uneasy. Grog flinched as suddenly, Vex’s left eye flashed with a twinkle of green light, like the eyeshine of a predator. Before Grog could react, Vex’ahlia ferociously thrust herself towards his face and sunk her teeth into his nose. He yelped as felt her teeth grind together against his nose, the sheer force of which began to crush the cartilage holding it together. Unable to remain calm, Grog grabbed at the back of her hair and began to tear her away from his face with little regard for her fragile neck or his nose. He pulled her face away from his as quickly as he could, but her jaws seemed fixed shut. Her teeth tore through the flesh of his nose as he dragged her head away. He could taste the blood as it gushed into both of their mouths and seeped into the coarse dark hair of his beard. Grog angrily cried out and, with one final yank, tore the ranger off of him by the tail of her braid and flung her against the steps of the ziggurat.

Vex’s body was still as it crashed against the glass and stone steps. She lay there motionless, splayed onto the steps like a smashed spider on the ground with her face shrouded by hair. Grog licked the blood from his lips before mashing more of the crimson stream into his beard with his hand. He and Trinket were seething and guarded. They both gritted and bared their teeth as they took their flanking positions against their hysterical companion. They watched carefully as she began to sluggishly skitter back up to her feet. The once faint web of black veins that marred her skin when Vax had found her was now more clearly pronounced. Her head remained down as she stood and her legs jerked and wobbled with every step. Deep red droplets fell to the glass-tiled ground from behind the veil of wild black hair that obscured the ranger’s face, followed by a few tiny strips of cool grey flesh. Slowly, she began to tilt her head up to reveal her face to them again. Her blood-smeared mouth was locked in a snarl. From behind the mess of ropey dark hair, they could see her glowing left eye now overflowing with arcane energy. Before Grog and Trinket stood not the Vex’ahlia they’d come to respect and love over the years, but a being far more unnerving.

Trinket looked on but his animal mind was unable to fully process the stand off taking place in front of him. He paced and growled in frustration at the pair as if pleading for peace. Grog, on the other hand, no longer felt hindered by the trappings of friendship. He looked at Vex with red, bloodshot eyes, and let out a furious roar! Blood and spit rained down onto the space between them, and Vex welcomed the raging goliath’s challenge with her own desiccated screech. This did little to intimidate or dissuade Grog as he barreled towards her, unarmed, and in one fell swoop managed to scoop her up by the torso. He lifted her off of her feet and just as quickly slammed her body onto the tiled floor. Grog loomed over her as she continued to thrash about. His small, now rage-addled mind was too caught up in the heat of battle to process the battle that began to take place between them.  

“I don’t wanna hurt you!” Grog pleaded as a sliver of mercy pierced his rage-addled mind. His pleas seemed to only whip Vex into an even greater frenzy as continued her crazed assault on him. Grog continued to press her down against the floor; he hadn’t seen a rage quite like this, even out of the most desperate creatures he’d battled in the past. She spat and howled with every thrashing movement. She clawed, bit, and kicked at him, and used any limb of hers at her disposal in an effort to free herself. He could hear the sound of Vex’s ribs crack as she strained to resist against his detainment of her. “Vex, cut this out!”

Grog’s command fell on defiant ears. Vex reached her leg up and began to boot Grog’s midsection, over and over, until finally, she landed a crushing blow between his thighs. Grog was instantaneously sent reeling back into his rage, but as he quickly cupped himself for protection, Vex wriggled out of from under his grasp.

“I said I didn’t wanna hurt you, **didn’t say I wouldn’t!** ” Grog warned. Vex hissed again before booting him once more in his already mangled nose. She crawled away from him up the stairs backwards towards the corridor with preternatural agility. Grog growled as he raised his arms and clasped his hands together. Before he could bring his fists down upon Vex’s body, Trinket instinctively leaped in and sunk his mighty jaws down onto the side of his face – a primal reaction to protect his master at any cost. The sheer force of the bear’s reaction pushed Grog further away from Vex. Once far enough away from Vex, Trinket released Grog from his mouth and took guard between the two former friends.

Vex rose to her feet, and while her bear distracted Grog, she rushed forward and wrapped her hands around the barbarian's face. She plunged her thumbs against the his eyes without remorse. Grog howled in pain as Vex pressed the weight of herself down upon his face. Trinket quickly rushed up and wedged his armored head between the two of them. Though she was vicious in undeath, Vex was still not much of a match physically against her full-grown brown bear, and was thrown from Grog’s face with relative ease. Trinket planted himself firmly between the pair once more. He growled in anxiousness as his head darted back and forth between them, unsure of what the other might do next (neither seemed responsive to reason!) Grog wiped away the sting of Vex’s thumbs from his eyes and moved forward, and shoved past Trinket as he drew his warhammer. Vex staggered forward with outstretched arms and attempted to grapple the barbarian once more, but just as she approached, Grog swung wide and brought his warhammer down into Vex’s gut. Vex stumbled back, but before she could recover her footing, Grog angrily delivered a second hearty blow into her that jettisoned her into the dark corridor leading into the ritual chamber. Grog took a brief moment to himself to blink away the pain from his scratched, bloodshot eyes. As he opened his eyes, he saw only Trinket standing there, his defensive growl now one of apparent worry. Vex was now nowhere to be seen. Grog cautiously moved towards the entrance of the chamber with his warhammer still in hand. As Grog stomped into the darkness, he could hear the low moaning of his companion echo throughout. Grog huffed and slammed his hammer against the corridor wall. Both to scare her out, and out of childish frustration for not being able to see.

_"C’mon Vex_ , I’m not the one you want to tussle with! Now come out where I can see you!” Grog stopped as he heard the sound of feet shambling towards him. Grog urged his friend as his rage began to calm, “That’s right, come on out.”

As he listened closer to the sounds echoing throughout the corridor, something seemed amiss. The footsteps approaching were not just of one person, but sounded numerous. Grog stopped and shuddered as the smell of old rotten flesh began to waft through the hall. The faint light on the other side of the tunnel did little to help him see, and his vision was still obscured by Vex’s attack on him. In the dark, his eyes seemed almost useless. From what he could make out, he watched as the thin silhouettes of many lurched towards him. Their shadows were each dotted with sparks of the same green glow. Their cacophonous moans seemed amplified in the corridor as they closed in on him. He staggered back, unnerved by the creatures before him. He could only see shapes and green glowing specks. Any one of them could be Vex, and until he could see them in the light, he couldn’t risk being the one to finish her off.   Though he had never been one to back away from a fight, he was wise enough to know that this hall was no place for a quarrel. He backed out of the corridor, towards the steps, and swiped at the air between the moving shadows with his hammer.

Amidst the chaos and devastation in the ziggurat, Keyleth’s form remained in its place atop the platform. The battles below carried on, and as they did, the air around the effigy continued chill. Its once glossy surface began to dull in shine as a cool haze began to form over it. Soon, the faint sound of cracking stone followed. Thin fractures began to form at both the left fist and the open left eye of the statue. The cracks quickly began to travel up the arm and down across the face. The cracks grew longer and deeper at the fist and face, and as they continued across the body, the parts of origin began to collapse into themselves. The once polished stone of her fist and eye quickly crumbled into withered, blackened husks. The thin fractures had infected the entirety of the form, deepening and expanding into jagged fissures in seconds. The statue’s now brittle flesh began to flake off as the form began to shrivel. Pieces from the fist and face fell away first, and as the husk peeled away, revealed flashes of that same burning green light that flickered in the eyes of the dead below. The remains of Keyleth’s left hand exploded with a pulse of dark magical energy. Shreds of papery black flesh fluttered around the body, like ashes in an updraft as the burning energy began to eat away at the form. Coils of green light erupted from the remnants of the form and began to travel outward. They whipped around briefly before journeying back down through the body. The trails of light smashed through the shell and tore away large black chunks of husk with every new loop. The trails of arcane light wove in and out of each other and multiplied with every stream crossed. The trails of light quickly melded together and expanded to create a glowing green mass of light where Keyleth once stood, the ashes of whom now swirled around in the globe. As the mass grew in size, it also grew in brightness, and soon the whole of the top of the ziggurat was bathed in ill radiance.

Grog continued to back out of the corridor slowly, but as the chamber at the end lit up with green light, he could see the approaching forms more clearly. Waves of graceless undead filled the corridor and stuffed their bodies wall-to-wall to shuffle as one. They clamored together, all in their of desire to sunder Grog; each corpse glared at him with those strange, shining green eyes. Individually, they would have been but a nuisance to a goliath of his might.   Together, they swarmed with a terrifying density that more than made up for their lack of individual strength and speed. With every corpse knocked down, two or three more appeared in its place, eager to tear into him. They marched forward, naked and unwavering, in their pursuit of him. Yet, there seemed to be no sign of Vex among them. The horde was ravenous, mindless, and unstoppable. They clawed and bit into his stone gray flesh as they emptied out of the corridor and piled onto him. He was surrounded (and were he any good at counting, he’d have numbered the glowing eyes facing him in the dozens!) Every hesitant swing of his warhammer briefly cleared the area around him. Still, there appeared to be no sign of Vex.


	6. In the Wings

The swirling coils of necromantic energy began weave through each other. Out of that chaos was formed a globe of sickly arcane light. Its surface surged with necromantic energy as its shell expanded towards the edges of the pillar. Percy struggled to see through the blinding green at his spot on top of the chamber wall. He brought his beaked mask back down over his face in the hopes that its tinted lenses would aid in him. The light still proved too intense to see through, and all Percy could do was try and look away from it. Vax, Pike, and Scanlan continued to fight their way against the growing horde, and gave little notice to the brightness above as they slowly cut through towards the exit of the chamber.

The globe of necromantic energy expanded several feet beyond the edge of the platform before it stabilized. A strange, unexpected calm swept over the entire cavern. The shine of the globe began to dim; Percy turned back towards the globe and watched the ashes of Keyleth’s form swirled together in the center like some throbbing black nucleus. With the calm came the sudden absence of moans from the undead. Vax, Pike, and Scanlan watched as the bodies around them all began to stop in place: some with arms outstretched, others frozen in mid step or crawl. The three of them each looked around nervously; the glow in the dead’s left eyes also began to die down to a subtle flicker.  

Pike slowed down to catch her breath for a moment. She carefully began to step between the frozen bodies near her. As she called out to her friends, her eyes never left the statuelike creatures that surrounded her.

“Vax? Scanlan? Are you guys alright?”  
“Pike!” Scanlan shouted in relief. “I’ve never heard a voice more angelic!”  
“Second only to your own, of course.”  
“Of course. Where are you?”  
“I’m on my way to you. Just stay put. Vax, are you alright?”  
“Pike," Vax replied, still encircled by the dead. "I’m near the corridor, but I’m surrounded. Get Scanlan and follow the sound of my voice! Hurry!”

Pike wasted no time. She kept her mace drawn and began to rush through the maze of bodies between her and her friends. Scanlan could hear the sound of her plates rattle together and snuck away from his spot towards the clattering sound.

“Pike, I’m coming to you!”  
“Scanlan, I said stay put!” 

The air above burned with a quick flash of pale green radiance, followed by the sound of crackling electricity. Pike and Scanlan stopped and watched as the bodies, once re-frozen in place, began to ferociously spasm in unison. The once low, moaning chorus swelled with a horrific shrieking pitch as they convulsed, shocked back to life with arcane vitality. Their left eyes no longer merely glowed; they furiously burned with death magic so intense that it singed the very sockets they rested in. They turned their heads ‘round and no longer seemed hindered by the atrophy of death. They moved with a ravenousness and urgency that only possessed the most hungry and wild of animals. Even those whose limbs had been ravaged moved unfazed as the strength of the rest of their body more than compensated for their lost limbs. The members of Vox Machina on the ground were withered by exhaustion in comparison to the vigor these creatures now possessed.

The evil that blanketed the cavern was more potent than any single demon, beast, or fiend any of the members of Vox Machina had ever encountered. Pike did her best to focus through her anger even though she no longer felt a divine connection, and reassured herself that the horrors that clamored together against she and her friends were no match for Sarenrae’s divinity. A group of eight to nine creatures quickly surrounded her, and as movement returned to them, they chomped, clawed, and bashed against her shield. She pushed through them and made sure to aim her mace low: if she couldn’t kill the dead, she could certainly hobble them. She recalled the shifty combat secrets she had picked up from pirates she’d encountered while at sea, and went for quick and dirty blows. She cracked open kneecaps, bashed through shins, and severed through feet with the edge of her shield, all as she made her way towards Scanlan.

_“Scanlan!”_ she cried out as she swatted one corpse aside.

Pike placed her shield in front of her and rushed ahead as Scanlan came into vision. His brilliant, brocade-clothed body was once again visible, but only for a brief moment, as a row of creatures of varying heights and states of decay began to surround him. With all of her might, she leaped up off of the ground towards the broad back of a thoroughly rotted dwarven corpse. The back of the creature began to collapse under the weight of her boots, and as she stepped out of his torso, she brought her mace down upon the back of a taller human corpse’s skull. She yanked the mace up and with it its head, ripped from the neck. The creature wriggled to the ground and as it dropped, revealed Scanlan, still armed with sword and lute. He was battered and dirtied with sweat and bits of decay, but still managed a sincere smile in Pike’s presence.

“Pike, you did it, babe! You saved me!”

Pike tore the skull from the bladed edge of her mace and tossed it into the chest of another creature coming towards them.

“Scanlan, I—“

The globe flashed once again and released with it a single pulse of energy from its surface. The pestilent wave extended over the entirety of the pit and lit up the battlefield even more brightly than it had been before. As the pulse extended over the battlefield, it began to dissolve into lingering, glowing vapor that quickly slithered down into the pit. As the strange vapor brushed against the dark jade walls of the chamber, it briefly crackled like emerald electricity against the surface before it evaporated from sight. However, as the vapor descended upon Pike’s body, Scanlan watched helplessly as the cleric’s form began to dematerialize. The dark magic began to quickly to eat away at her astral form. Pike stumbled back and tried to bat the swirling vapor away, but it seemed in vain. Her form began to glitch and shift from material to golden and ethereal. Scanlan reached out, but as his fingers touched her armor, her ravaged form exploded into thousands of tiny specks of golden light, the force of which was so intense that it knocked he and a nearby cluster of corpses off their feet.

“PIKE!”

Percy watched helplessly from above and cried out to his friends below. He searched frantically but could see no sign of the cleric anywhere in the chamber, just the trailing column of golden motes fluttering through the air. He turned his gaze back to the globe at the top of the platform and could feel within him a wickedness stir – a strange compulsion he still did not understand the source of. It was as if the vengeance in him was becoming more pronounced, and as it took its new shape, it seemed to compel him to stand down and watch. He felt trapped within his own body, unable to stop the destruction of his home and his family. Percy struggled to move himself away from the edge of the roof, but the smoke that surrounded him began to tighten and constrict around his body. The dense black smog quickly to fashion itself into a cocoon, one that revealed only his face. Thin tendrils of smoke slithered up beneath his mask towards his eyes. He felt himself unable to blink, no matter how hard he tried. He could feel something begin to worm its way into his head as the chaos all around him continued to unfold. It was a dull, warm pressure against the back of his eyes that forcefully dilated his pupils to their fullest possible expanse. The carnage below became deliberately more and more visible to him. He could hear a distant, guttural cackle echo in the depths of his mind, from a voice that had only spoken to him in dreams. Whatever spirit that dwelled within Percy – that which once gave him the fearlessness to smite the demons that had taken everything away from him as a boy – now kept him bound. Percy was no longer a man, merely a vessel for something more sinister to watch and savor the devastation of everything he held dear.


	7. Animus

The surface of undulating green orb began to tear and peel a seconds passed. Cold, paler green light poured out of every new fissure and as the beams broke free of their circular shell, the broken transparent skin of the orb began to reach up to top of the cavern. As the beams of light and the exterior shreds of energy raced to the cavern’s ceiling, they began to spiral around each other like mating serpents. The speed of this growing helix was slight at first, and as it spun together, it brought with it a soft, cold breeze. But, as the battle below waged on, the braiding of the helix quickened, and as it spun more and more wildly, so too did the breeze grow with increasing intensity.

Percy began to feel faint and short of breath. He tried to sink to his knees, but the cocoon of smoke that had formed around him kept him upright and unable to escape. He continued to stand against his will and gasped for air, all while captivated by the swirling pillar of dangerous energy. Below, Vax and Scanlan did their best to keep their footing, but each of them could feel the very air from their lungs begin to empty from their bodies. Try as they might to fend off the seemingly endless horde, they began to stumble, and clutched their chests as they struggled to keep their breath to themselves. Still, the horde persisted in its attack against the remaining members of Vox Machina, undaunted.

Vax continued to swipe his daggers at the creatures before him, though his vision began to cloud. He feebly slashed through their palms and torsos, but still they continued. The weight of physical, mental, and emotional exhaustion had taken its toll on him as he felt his consciousness wane. Through his blurred vision, he watched as the shadows that crowded around him began to part. He continued to flaccidly hold out his Flametongue dagger, ready to strike. A mix of worry and confusion (and bizarrely enough, even relief) churned in the pit of his gut as another being crept towards him. With the back of his free hand, he wiped at his eyes, and focused in on the figure’s head. It was clothed in familiar leathers, with a trail of loosely braided black hair that flapped in the growing breeze. Barely able to keep the grip on his dagger firm, he whimpered.

_“V... V… Vex?”_

Its left eye blazed with green at the sound of its name, and in that moment, Vax felt truly hopeless. Vex shrieked and wildly pounced onto her brother, as she tackled him to the ground. Together, they tumbled down into the shallow, carved area near the pillar as a line of undead raced after them. Vax landed into first into the pit, flat on his back, followed immediately after his sister. He struggled to keep Vex at bay; he grabbed at her wrist with one hand while he pushed her jaw up and away with the handle of the Flametongue dagger. She was vicious and unhinged in her fit as she snapped and growled, while the other corpses descended down into the pit with them. They quickly began to yank and tear at his cloak and hair and pull at his legs as if to drag the both of them out. While he booted whatever creatures he could away from him, Vax cautiously opened his eyes and looked up at his sister’s face. Her already fair skin was ghostly white and marred by dark veins. Her lips were cracked and caked in dark rust-colored stains, and wet with spittle that dripped down onto his cheek. Her right eye was still milky and expressionless, while the only trace of her left eye was in the droplets of blood that had dried while trickling down her cheek beneath the searing glow of green light.

Vax quickly released his sister from his grasp, but before she could strike out or flee, he used the last bit of strength he could muster to wrestle her in closer to his chest. He squeezed as tight as he could as they rolled onto their sides, but she was much stronger now than he’d ever known her to be in her frenzied state. He could feel her convulse and cry out in frustration against his brotherly embrace. It recalled memories of their occasional fights as young wanderers, and while she had always been more outwardly fiery than him, he always knew a hug from him could calm her. She bit and clawed at his arms as the other creatures around them rushed in to slam and stomp against his ribs and back, but still Vax held on as tight as he could. Vex whipped her head back widly and cracked her brother’s lip open against the top of her skull. He quickly and forcefully pushed her head back down against his chest and tucked his head closer to hers. He swallowed the blood that had begun to run profusely from his lip, but thought little of it in the moment. His vision had begun to flicker in and out of focus, and frustration, anger, and a growing sense of hopelessness were all that seemed left on his mind. While he held her head, Vax could feel a searing cold radiating from the blown-out cavern of her left eye socket. In his fading moments, he tearfully whispered to his sister once more:

“I love you, Stubby. I’m never gonna leave your side. I’m always gonna be here. You can always be a pain in the ass like you are! I love you. I always have. I always will.”

Dozens of undead clustered around Scanlan and were eager to have their piece of the bard. He moved with uncanny fluidity though, and wielded both lute and long sword as weapons – a feat he himself had no idea he was capable of! While he’d always known his greatest strength was in his charisma and the bardic magic at his command, in this hour he drew upon the reserve of combat techniques he’d learn from those more skilled in battle around him over the years. He also tapped into ancient bardic breath exercises he’d learned but had only applied when playing woodwinds (or on sordid long nights touring bordellos across Tal’dorei.) These were keys to his survival, even as the air grew thinner and thinner.

The whirling helix of necrotic energy began to spin more and more rapidly and the arcane breeze that filled the cavern strengthened. As the winds blew, they clouded the battlefield in ice and dirt that fluttered upwards around the helix. Outside of the center pit, the undead armies continued to push through the corridors and empty out down the steps of the ziggurat. Grog and Trinket banded together to lay waste to whatever fetid creatures crossed their paths, but the swarms continued to pour, almost endlessly. With every creature that fell to their attacks, three more appeared in its place.

“We can do it, buddy! Stay strong, do it for your mum!”

Trinket growled back in solidarity, and as they continued to keep the beasts at bay valiantly as they could, they too began to feel the air thin in the cavern. Grog swung wider; Trinket slashed and bit with less and less vigor. Fatigue had begun to set in, but still, the dead kept on coming. The pair was surrounded, and in their periphery, they watched as small clusters of undead broke away from their pack to rush down the steps towards the tunnels leading out of the cavern.

“Hold ‘em back!” Grog cried out as he broke through the crowd and swung his warhammer wildly, knocking its dense stone surface against the skulls and backs of those running away.

Grog turned around and looked back towards Trinket. As he turned to see his bear companion, he watched as the animal’s body was engulfed in a swarm of undead. Trinket’s deep, pained howls were quickly muffled under the weight of the growing swarm on top of him. Grog roared and began to rush back up the steps towards Trinket, but soon he felt the touch of sinewy fingers drag against his arms, back, and shoulders. Their wiry arms wrapped around his neck and waist as they leaped onto his back. He felt their broken teeth and frayed nails dully cut through his exposed flesh. Grog tried with every last ounce of strength to fight his way back to his feet, but the creatures just continued to pile on top of him, to the point where corpses feverishly clawed through one another just to taste goliath blood. Grog’s senses were overwhelmed; as his knees crashed upon the tiled floor, he could hear the sound of glass begin to crack beneath him.

Percy’s eyes remained pried open by the strange spirit that possessed him. Tears of horror and frustration dampened his face as he strained to fight the presence within. He glanced up from the battle below and up to the green column and watched as the pillar of toxic green light rose high above the ziggurat. As the beam collided into the whitestone roof of the cavern, it created an umbrella of crackling green energy that webbed out over the width of the temple. Percy continued to fixate on the pillar itself though, and with his supernaturally enhanced sight, he watched as something began to grow deep within the core of the green pillar. With every crash of arcane light, the dark mass bubbled with reaction. The surface of the dark embryo sizzled with magical vitality and soon, the formless began to mature in shape.

Long shadowy wisps emerged from its pulsating surface. They whipped themselves against the inside of the pillar, and caused thick bolts to erupt with each blow. As the bolts collided into the residuum glass, a hydralike spray of smaller, thinner beams surged out in a chain lightning effect before they returned to the glowing column. However, the rotted bodies of the Briarwoods’ supplicants exploded in a flash of green light and black ash when pierced by these powerful bolts. As the magic released from the pillar consumed more and more of the Briarwoods’ army, the wisps within began to harden into long, skeletal limbs, and eventually, was crowned with a gaunt, featureless head. With every sacrifice made to it below, its form lapped up each offering and continued to develop, little by little. Percy watched as the growing silhouette raised its right arm and guided with it the shadowy vapor from its very torso, and pulled it across the limb to form black sinew and flesh. The shadows slithered upwards over hand and winded down into long, twisted fingers that clenched together with new life. Percy shuddered as realization of what had really begun to unfold before him set in. The true nature of Delilah’s ritual had been realized. She had set out to incubate the birth, or perhaps the return of, a being of incredible power – and he and his friends had helped set it into motion!

Below, the battlefield was in absolute disarray. The undead horde fought with continued vigor and speed, apparently oblivious to their true purpose. Scanlan’s clever breathing tricks were only able to sustain him for so long. Exhaustion had finally begun to take over his body, but his it was much harder to sap him of his cleverness. He was in no shape to fight them head on any longer; instead, Scanlan did what he could, and used their frenzy against them as he led them on a brief wild chase across the battlefield. He zigged and zagged and managed to shield himself with the bodies of sacrificial dead as the bolts of energy struck out from above. Outside, Grog and Trinket remained buried beneath piles of undead. Trinket and Grog each tried their best to roar, both for help and for solidarity, but the layers of bodies on top of each of them only served to smother their cries. Grog had not felt this weak since he had been abandoned by his herd as a younger goliath, and he felt a sense of dread begin to darken the edges of his vision. Back in the chamber, Vax could feel his body and mind begin to give in as well. He no longer felt strong enough to fight back against the army that had gathered at he and his sister’s bodies. He felt his hold on Vex loosen and, in the fleeting moments of blurring consciousness, watched her start to hurriedly wriggle out of his arms. His bones began to crack and skin began to break and bleed with every blow dealt; yet he lay there, motionless.

_“Don’t go –,”_ he whimpered before his head fell limp against the earth.

Pike opened her eyes and gasped for air as she struggled, at first, to adjust to the sudden brightness she awoke to. The air that surrounded her was light and carried with it the scents of a nearby bakery and, beyond that, a forest. Against her back she felt the firm yet soft cushioning of a small cot. Her body was clothed in a simple linen tunic and slacks. A finely knit quilt was tucked under her arms, up to her chest; it was dyed and embroidered with golden sun-shaped symbols. Pike looked around as her eyes acclimated to the light. In the corner of the modest room stood a small set of plate armor adorned with several of the symbols of Sarenrae. Similarly crafted weaponry was gathered together beside the rack of armor. A modest altar littered with flowers sat just to the left. The petals were both fresh and dried; unlit candles; and hand-written prayers surrounded a bronze angelic idol in the center. The pale granite walls were decorated with quaint, imperfect tapestries embroidered with images of her goddess, along with letters and sketches from her friends – her family – in Vox Machina. The humbly decorated stone room was instantly familiar as Pike’s vision refocused: she was back in Vasselheim, body and spirit rejoined. Despite apparently not having moved from her chamber bed, her body was drenched in the sweat of battle. She looked down and felt the cold, hard bronze metal of her holy medallion between her small, rough hands. She gently released it before looking around the room more, but as she let it relax against her chest, she felt a lingering chill cling to her palms. Afternoon light continued to pour in from small stained glass windows as her eyes adjusted to the room and signaled a definite change from the perpetual darkness of Whitestone. At her bedside there sat a pair of attendants, acolytes of the faith, both of whom were adorned in matching robes. One had a bell resting between pages of an open, well-read copy of _The Birth of Light and Truth_ in that rested in her lap, while the other had with her a small linen cloth and modest clay chalice filled with water at the ready. Pike looked to the altar that she had put together, and she focused on the bronzed angelic shape that stood amidst it, she began to slowly feel the divine warmth return to her talisman, and for a brief moment, she felt consoled. Pike sat up in her bed and the acolytes stood to attention as urgently as they could. One quickly set her tome down, rushed out into the halls, and rang her bell frantically as she called out to the others in the temple. The other knelt down beside Pike and gently offered up the chalice for the gnome to drink from, while she patted away the sweat from the cleric’s brow with her linen square.

“No, this can’t be! I have to go back!”  
"What happened? What did you see, Sister?”

Pike guzzled the chalice of water and handed it back to the attendant with one hand, while the other remaining tight around her holy symbol.

“Whatever it is -- whoever it is -- it still has my friends! **I can’t just leave them!** “

 


	8. Lost and Found

_No, no! It should have just been me! This can’t be how it ends._

Percy’s eyes were still open, and he could still hear that deep voice rasp from deep within his mind. The delirium of battle had taken its toll. The deep, raspy laughter of that strange, foreign beast scraped along the walls of his mind. Percy wanted so bad to laugh right along with it, to believe that this was some mad dream of his. To believe that the cruelty of the day spent beneath his ancestral home was purely fictitious.

He mentally called out to whatever gods might be around to hear his cries. Sarenrae, Kord, Bahamut, even the Raven Queen (that she may guide his friends’ souls to some safer plane, from of the defilement of Whitestone) but the only response given was that of the rasping, echoing laughter of that unseen beast within. Green lightning continued to streak all around him, but Percy’s sight never left the top of the platform. Swirling robes of black vapor now adorned the shape within; its body was still lean, but where once an ashen skeleton stood, the shadows had dressed it in rapidly appearing black muscle and flesh. Its left hand was immaterial, a shapeless mass of the same shocking green energy as the light that possessed the creatures below. Shadow flesh slowly pulled itself across the planes and ridges of the skull of the being, but the head was still without a mouth from which to speak, neither a nose to smell from, nor eyes from which to see.

Percy began to feel the beating of his heart slow down, and the veins in his throat and limbs tighten. “Why are you doing this?” he sobbed aloud. His teeth chattered as he felt the tears against his cheek begin to freeze.  
“Come now, Percival,” the voice replied in a smoky tone that reverberated around the inside of his mind. _“You_ are the architect of your own fate. _Orthax_ only helped to guide you here. Every gun made, every bullet fired, and every foe you slayed was done so by your hand.”  
“No, not like this! This isn’t what I wanted!”  
“You called out for vengeance. Orthax answered!”  
“Please, Orthax, I beg of you—“

 _“ **HAHAHAHAHAHA!** ”_ Laughter echoed in his mind, but this time, the laughter was accompanied by the distorted cawing of old, carrion birds. The laughter was so sharp that Percy felt as if his eardrums might break from within.

“My friends were not a part of this arrangement! Take me if you must, but spare them!”  
“Worry not for them, Percival. They are gone. I am all you have left now, and before the day is up, you will forever be a part of me!”

Percy looked for any sign of hope as Orthax’s laughter continued to ring through his head. He struggled to breath and, as he watched his breath fog out, he felt a gentle, warm breeze billow past his head and carry the breath away. Motes of dim light fluttered around his periphery and floated along the breeze towards the incubation chamber atop the platform. Percy watched as more and more of the motes softly blinked to life through the darkness. Percy marveled at how the specks of light seemed to move with sentience.

The motes buoyed around the pillar and flickered as they gathered together, almost as if coordinating some unknown, cryptic message to each other. The motes floated into each other to form clusters of light that clung to the exterior of the necrotic incubation beam. A haze of pale golden light began to wash over the top of the platform as more and more of these strange clusters formed. The black shape within began to flash in and out of corporeal being as the clusters of motes lit up in cohesion. Percy was captivated, and for the first time since he woke up from the dream that set him on his current path so many years ago, he felt a peace begin to warm him.

Suddenly, the bunches of pale light erupted into a series of golden solar flares that quickly began to burn away at the green layers containing the dark presence within. The shape shrieked as its body contorted back and forth from living shadow. It clawed and thrashed at the inside of the pillar, but it was trapped. The center quickly lit up, changing from green to gold to blinding white.

_“O Sarenrae, hear my tearful plea!”_

Back in Vasselheim, Pike and her fellow disciples had gathered together before the modest altar in her chamber. She concentrated on the faces of her friends, as they were before the horror of Whitestone: beautiful, playful, and smiling. She loudly exhaled before leading the chant once more. More acolytes joined Pike and brandished their matching talismans and sacred tomes as they began to chant along with their devoted sister. Other acolytes quietly gathered in the room but kept a safe distance behind them.   All together, they began to descend into a deep, droning trance lead by Pike.

_“O Sarenrae! Dawnflower, Keeper of the Healing Light. Great Redeemer, we beseech you!”_

The flares of radiant energy broke apart into rays of golden filament that began to encase the surface of the insidious pillar. The sickly green hue of the cavern was slowly shifting into a calmer, warmer light, like that of rising sunshine. The wires of golden light wrapped around the pillar and began to constrict themselves around it. The shadowy form inside recoiled in horror from the light. As the golden wires burned through the layers of necrotic energy, the form began to retreat into the shadowy embryonic sphere it began as.

_“O Sarenrae, Mistress of Grace and Healing, help us to put an end to the suffering that has befallen Whitestone! Grant Vox Machina the blessing of your light and purge the evil beneath…”_

Thicker streams of pale, opalescent energy burst forth from the golden corona that had begun to form in place of the sundered pillar. The once frigid cavern quickly began to warm the glow of the awesome light washed over everything, and illuminated every last shadow until it was as bright as high noon. The pillar of green light had been burned away, and left behind the exposed, swirling shadowy mass within. It struggled to keep its presence unmarred by the divine light, but it could only shrink away as coils of sunlight swirled around it, like thin, golden serpents constricting their prey.

_“O Sarenrae, radiant and righteous, we beseech thee, intervene with your divine light.”_

Percy watched as the lingering mass of necrotic energy left isolated at the top of the platform evaporated into nothingness as golden filament engulfed it. The green glow that burned in the left eyes of the undead began trickle out of their skulls. Streams of burned green energy streaked into the air, up towards the top of the platform. Where once a green obelisk stood, now a blindly brilliant halo of sunlight existed, its heart white-hot and expanding. The thin wires of golden light fluttered about and slowly whipped at the empty air around it before they began to weave back into themselves.

From the heart of the white light, Percy watched as another figure began to take shape. The upper torso of the being began to materialize from the wefts of golden light, its size almost three times larger than the creeping shadow that had almost emerged only minutes prior. Its flesh was a kaleidoscope of chaotic radiance, a swirling mass of light streams that collided and exploded into each like the surface of the sun. The new form was lithe and feminine, and though its head held no distinguishing features, it was crowned with a golden flame that burned so high that it almost seemed to lick the top of the cavern. The figure moved slowly and with purpose as it nodded its head down towards Percy. He watched as the smoke that kept his form bound upright began to loosen just enough to allow him to slip from its grip. He fell to his knees and clasped his hands over the goggles of his mask, relishing in the ability to shut his eyes. The cocoon of smoke remained behind him. Percy quickly looked back and watched as thick, smoky tendrils lashed out at him. He flinched at first, but noticed something shield him from the attack. It was unseen at first, and only made itself known with a brief golden flicker with every impact of the tendrils. The shell of smoke withdrew itself from Percy, but as it did, its shape began to change as well. As the smoke gathered into the shape of a tall, broad humanoid figure, Percy scrambled to draw Bad News and readied himself.

In Vasselheim, as the acolytes continued their chant, Pike began to quietly break from script.   Softly, she pleaded with Sarenrae: "There is good still left in Whitestone. Sarenrae, please! This can’t be how it ends for them. My friends need you. **I need you, please!** ”

With her heartfelt plea delivered, the other acolytes watched as Pike’s form shimmered with familiar golden radiance. They trembled in awe as Pike began to slowly lift off of the floor and the aura of radiant energy that enveloped her began to intensify. Ribbons of light suddenly began to emerge from Pike’s talisman and weaved themselves across her body to strengthen the shimmering aura. The acolytes stopped reciting their prayers and looked up; the flash of gold all danced in their glassy eyes. They yelped together as the unlit wicks of the candles atop Pike’s altar that surrounded the idol of Sarenrae sparked with divine, smokeless flame. The rays of light that poured in through the small windows brightened and began to aim themselves up towards Pike’s body. Her body resonated with increasing light and warmth. The acolytes began to weep for never before had they seen such confirmation of their divine matron. They embraced one another as Pike’s eyes opened and revealed a divine light so intense that they burned like small white suns.

Though he couldn’t understand or explain it in his state, for the first time in weeks, Vax felt oddly safe. He watched, through the darkness of his subconscious, as a faint spark of light began to twinkle in the distance. The spark quickly began to brighten and grow until the darkness of his vision was engulfed. His eyelids burst open, and as air quickly returned to him, he saw the pit now bathed in pale gold.   He sat up as quickly as he could and watched all around him as the dead fell to their knees convulsing and crying out for release from the light. They tore at their cheeks and temples as the necrotic energy poured out from their eye sockets into the air. Vax looked around and though his head was still foggy from the return, he knew well enough that this was his best chance to flee. Vax felt the soreness of the blows the creatures had inflicted upon him as he rose to his feet. He clutched his ribs and hobbled as quickly as he could across the battlefield, and pushed the shaking bodies out of his way all while calling out to his sister.

“Vex? Vex’ahlia?!”

It was only a few yards away when he heard it. The scream was less hoarse than the others, and unfortunate in its familiarity. As he closed in on the sound, it recalled the few instances where he had heard it before, and the anger and helplessness that it filled him with in those moments.

 ** _“VEX’AHLIA, I’M COMING!”_** Vax shouldered a pair of corpses out of his way as he hurriedly limped towards the body of his sister. He crouched down next to her heaving, shivering body and winced in great pain as he slipped his arms underneath her body.  “I’ve got you,” he whispered as he scooped her up off the pile of other writhing bodies. She was back in his arms, and the joy of that drowned out the tension of pulled muscles and broken bones. Together, they rushed towards the exit as quickly as his damaged legs could carry them.

The luminous figure atop the platform stoically moved her head across the width of the chamber and surveyed the battlefield one last time with its eyeless face. The remaining members of Vox Machina all paused and watched in awe as the figure gracefully lifted her hand over the pit. The streams of necrotic energy that emptied out of the undead eyes began to gather into the entity’s open palm into a single, swirling globe. Below, the undead kept their heads up towards the top of the platform, frozen in anticipation.

The acolytes of Sarenrae clung together in their own awe as they watched their beloved cleric Pike continue to float above them. Her eyes still aglow, Pike extended her hand out into the empty space before her. She parted her lips and uttered a single, sacred invocation in a language unknown to those below – in a voice not of her own, with bass so powerful that it seemed to resonate throughout the whole of the temple! She balled her hand into a fist as she delivered the command, and the acolytes watched as the aura around her shattered. Shards of golden light fluttered around her, and briefly fused together into the familiar shape of angelic wings before they vanished from sight.

The entity closed her fingers around the toxic green globe. She clenched her fist, and as she held the globe within it, a pair of gigantic feathered wings composed of pure daylight erupted from her back. The spanning of the wings showered the ziggurat in a flurry of glittering embers that rained down from the top of the ziggurat all the way to its base and through the corridor that lead back to the castle. So resplendent were the wings that they reached beyond the width of the top of the former temple. Threads of necrotic energy tried to escape her radiant grasp; they wormed through her fingers and crawled up her arm in desperation. Her hand surged with prismatic light in response. The entity’s cleansing divine energy quickly burned the crackling wisps of dark magic away. She gently opened her hand and, floating in place of the once swollen gathering of necromancy, was a blinking spark of light – not unlike the one that Vax had seen in his unconscious vision. The entity bowed her head as she released the spark from her hand. All who stood below, both living and dead, watched as the glimmer of divine power floated high above them. The entity arched its wings back and flapped them forward once with tremendous force. The tips of her feathers grazed the spark and as they did, it released a brightness so impenetrable that all detail of the entity, and of the cavern, was lost to it.


	9. Clean

Scanlan’s eyes remained shut as the cavern filled with light. He could feel the strange breeze continue to graze against him, whipping up debris to crash and crumble against his small body. Through the thin skin of his eyelids, he noticed the brightness begin to dim. He carefully opened his eyes, and made sure to shield his brow with his hand as he did so. He looked up to the platform and gone were the entities of light and dark. There stood another pillar, though instead of the sickly green of necrotic energy, it shimmered with the golden divinity.

“You did it,” Scanlan cheered to himself. His heart warmed with pride for the seemingly absent cleric. Though he was unsure of where she ended up, he knew well enough that her disappearance was not in vain.

The spark continued to shrink in size, and as it evaporated, it released pulsing waves of pale golden energy carried by quick, powerful gusts of sweetly scented wind. Vax knew this scent, though in his battered state could do little to process its nature. It seemed to comfort him though as he held his sister’s limp body in his arms. It dulled the bitterness of the once-fetid air that had plagued the chamber. It was also enough for him to pause and look back at the golden light. He watched the beam press against both the erected stone platform and the whitestone roof of the cavern, both of which cracked under the force despite the pillars intangible appearance. Chunks of whitestone fell from the roof and collided into the lip of the platform, and debris from both tumbled down into the carved area surrounding the platform where they shattered and crushed the lingering creatures beneath. Vax clutched Vex’s body closer to him and pressed ahead towards the exit as the gusts of winds continued to pick up power and speed.

“Vax! Wait up!”

The rogue turned around to see Scanlan limping as quickly as possible behind him, sword and lute still in hands, his body caked in the stains of battle. He stood aside and quickly escorted Scanlan into the corridor before him. Vax gave one parting look back at the pillar of golden light. He was mesmerized by it again. Its brightness was a thing to behold, a reassurance of the beauty he had greatly missed in his time in Whitestone. A beauty he had feared he would never get to see again after this day. He felt the earthen walls around him rumble with uneasiness; the trembling broke him from his momentary daze and together, the trio charged ahead over fallen corpse after fallen corpse until they reached the steps. Vax looked down and noticed their bodies were now as pale as white ash – as if the divine light had bleached them pure!

Once out of the corridor, Scanlan was first to notice the wild scene playing out on the steps leading down. He watched as frail, bleached bodies were flung into the air in every direction. He could hear the smashing of brittle bones against hard glass and stone, followed by the low grumbling of a bear and a goliath. Scanlan and Vax approached carefully and watched as Grog and Trinket smashed and hacked into the dozens of bodies surrounding them with an almost childish pettiness.

 **“WHO’S DEAD NOW, HUH?”** Grog mocked over and over as he stomped on the skulls of those around him.  
“All right, all right, you’ve both had your fun,” Scanlan shouted out over the howling winds. “They aren’t getting any deader. Leave the corpses alone and let’s get out of here!”

Grog and Trinket looked up in unison, frozen in mid-attack, their chests labored with the movement of overly excited breath. Their eyes were wild as they looked at Scanlan and Vax, but they quickly warmed as realization set in. Trinket rushed up with the eagerness of a loyal dog and began to lovingly nuzzle and lick at the pair. He moved his snout over towards Vex and his excitement quickly descended into something more solemn. He gazed up at Vax with his glassy, beady brown eyes and snorted a bit. Though he was simple of mind, the scent his master’s body carried with it was a primal one.

“I know,” Vax replied as Trinket pressed his Bullette-plated head into the rogue's thigh. “She’s sleeping now, but we’ll wake her up. I promise!”

Trinket carefully nuzzled the top of his head into the twins before he lifted his large paw and gently pressed it onto Vex’s body.  He knew the scent well, but also knew deep down the conviction in Vax's words, though he couldn't quite understand the specifics of them.

Grog tossed another body aside down the steps as he approached the others. He wasn’t sure if he’d see them again, but there they were, together again – most of them any way.

“Where’s Pike?”  
“I’m not sure, she was taken during the battle,” Scanlan replied. He quickly shot a glance back up towards the golden pillar before he turned his attention back to Grog. “I have a feeling she’s doing alright,” he finished with a warmer, more sentimental tone.

Grog grimaced at the thought of his best friend not being there physically with them. He knew how Scanlan felt about her though, and the conviction of the bard’s words seemed to reassure him. He looked around again and realized others were missing. “What about Percy?”  
“We thought he was with you two!”  
“Right here!” a familiar patrician voice replied.

Grog turned around and saw the shock of white hair atop a billowing dark coat hobble towards them. He carried in one hand a length of rope that flailed down the chamber wall behind him; in the other, Bad News, as a sort of makeshift crutch. Short of breath, he continued.  
  
“Come, we don’t have much time!”  
“You don’t have to tell me twice,” Scanlan remarked as he climbed onto Trinket’s armored hide – much to the bear’s surprise. Scanlan adjusted himself before he firmly (yet lovingly) patted Trinket on the behind.

Grog looked relieved, but he looked around once more and realized another was absent. “And Keyleth?”

The rest of the party’s expressions weren’t as reassuring. Grog grimaced and, with a deep huff and a single and powerful kick, he booted a pile of lifeless corpses down the steps of the ziggurat. A loud rumbling echoed through the chamber that drowned out the sound of the bodies crumbling against the steps. The party looked around until their eyes collectively settled onto the pillar of light that shot up over the horizon of the chamber walls. They watched as the walls of the pillar began to flare with power, and expand. Behind them, golden light washed over the entirety of the chamber and began to empty out into the corridor after them. Gales of cleansing wind pushed their way out of the corridor and almost knocked the party over with its sudden intensity. This force of the wind seemed to move with intent, as if directing the party in a path down the steps.  

“If we’re waiting for a more formal invite, I think you’re all going to be very disappointed," Scanlan quipped. "Now let’s go!”

Trinket snorted in support of his newly appointed rider. The pair quickly set off down the steps, followed by Grog, Vax, and Vex. Percy ushered his companions down the steps in front of him. He hesitated in following them though. In that brief moment, he felt compelled to check his Pepper Box one more time. He quickly drew it from its holster beneath his jacket and inspected the barrel of the gun. There, still etched upon it, was the latest name: Cassandra de Rolo.

Percy’s head shot up and darted around in search of his sister. It took only a few brief glances before he saw her, belly down and bound, squirming towards the steps of the ziggurat a few yards away. Cassandra struggled to scrape herself forward, but she was still hogtied and covered in armor. Percy moved away from the steps and began towards his sister. The sound of his boot heels against the glass drew Cassandra’s attention. She turned her head and watched as the tall, masked figure approached.

“Percival,” she cried out with a wilted voice. “Percival, _please_ don’t leave me again!”

He stopped and loomed over her body without so much as a word. Cassandra could see the faint reflection of herself in the lenses of his mask. She shuddered with uncertainty. Though her appearance crumpled into one of open desperation, her eyes were fixed onto his tinted, expressionless eyes of his leather mask.

**“Percy, please!”**

Percy said nothing back, nor did he move closer to her. Deflated, Cassandra’s face slowly sunk against the rumbling ziggurat floor. Grog looked back to see Percy still at the top of the steps.  
“Percy, come on, we ain’t got much time!”  
“Go! I’ll be right behind you,” he turned and replied, his voice muffled through the mask.

He silently turned back to Cassandra and continued to approach her. The sound of his movement was enough to draw Cassandra’s head up off the ground, but her momentary relief slipped back into dread as she watched her brother draw his longsword. She pressed her eyes shut in dire anticipation and burbled out meek, tearful pleas to her brother for mercy; for him to not do what she believed he was well within his right to do. She could feel his shadow linger over her, and as she braced herself for retribution, she felt the tension that bound her shackled hands to her feet loosen. Her legs fell onto the ground with a slight thud. Her eyes opened widely and she carefully watched as Percy kneeled down beside her. He sheathed his blade with one hand while he reached down for her with the other.

“Come on,” he barked as he struggled to undo the manacles fastened around her wrists!

Cassandra did as she was ordered as quickly as she could manage. She glanced quickly up at her brother, then back at the entrance to the ritual chamber. She cried out as a thick beam of golden, cleansing light erupted through the corridor.

“Percy, hurry!”

He muttered a curse to himself as he managed to undo the old, black iron manacles. He tossed them back towards the chamber before he quickly slid his arm beneath hers and wrapped it around her waist to help keep her balanced. Together, they rushed down the steps as fast as they could manage after the others. Bodies, both whole and sundered, burst out of the brightly lit corridor and tumbled down the steps after the party. Light quickly swallowed the whole of the chamber; the sounds of shattering stone and glass rang throughout the cavern as the wind carried itself over the party. As pieces of the old temple, and the creatures that once dwelled within it, rained down around them, Vox Machina could feel the winds surrounding them guide the pieces away, as if to keep their path clear.

The acolytes of Sarenrae gathered around Pike. She laid there, ringlets of platinum hair strewn all over her head. They marveled at the serene display for a moment. It lasted only a moment though, as the gnome snorted back to consciousness with all the grace of her humble, gnomish upbringing.

“Sister Trickfoot,” began one attendant as the cleric came to. “Pike, I mean—“ _,_ the acolyte corrected herself. (Pike, after all, had never really been one to uphold the formalities and titles of her station.)  
“Did she answer?" Another attendant interrupted as she blotted the sweat from the Pike’s brow, "did Sarenrae hear us?”  
  
Pike let out a slight and groggy chuckle as she began to come out of her trance – a laugh of madness or relief, or some combination of the two. Pike looked up with half opened eyes that drifted in and out of focus, no doubt still lingering in the ecstasy of her divine commune with Sarenrae.

“Yes... yes she did,” she replied softly. Pike pressed her still warm, metallic fetish tightly to her chest. Smiling, she continued, _“_ she… she was there with them too!”

Pike let out one last delirious sigh before she slipped back out of consciousness. The acolytes gasped as they surrounded her. Many rushed out of her chamber to bring her food and water, as others carefully lifted her off the floor and gently placed her back into bed while they softly hummed songs of praise in honor of the Dawnflower and her most trusted disciple.

Grog kept himself at the front of the party line as they entered the makeshift tunnel leading out of the cavern. He basked in the glowing warmth of his is warhammer once again. Vax stopped for just a moment as Scanlan and Trinket passed by. He quietly tore a strip from his Cloak of Elvenkind and wrapped it around his sister’s eyes like a blindfold, before he draped the rest of it over her. Scanlan and Trinket waited for the half elves before they continued, and made sure to not leave their side as shuffled right along with them. The last of the de Rolo family lingered at the back of the line in silence. Cassandra leaned her head on her brother’s shoulder and held it there as they marched together. She looked to her brother, who had kept his mask down over his face. As they paced behind the others, Cassandra reached up and lifted the mask off her brother’s face. Percy turned and looked down at his sister, who returned his look of surprise with a smile. Vox Machina traversed the maze of disarmed traps and once-haunted mausoleums together as they backtracked their way through the undercrofts, back to the ground floor of the palace.

Vox Machina found Castle Whitestone just as quiet as they had left it as they returned to the ground level. This quiet was different, though, than the silence that they were previously welcomed with when they first infiltrated the estate. Grog psychically snuffed the flames of his warhammer but kept the weapon drawn for precaution. This was the quiet of apparent peace.  The party could see the sky over Whitestone through the tall, arched leaded glass windows that lined the great hall. It was virtually cloudless and marked by the misty silhouettes of the ancient Alabaster Sierras visible in the distance, just as Percy had described it to them. Their bodies tensed up momentarily as they moved through the foyer towards the main entrance. Grog scooped up the small metal caltrops from around the front door and poured them back into the Bag of Holding. The party stopped and gathered around the door. Together, they looked back at Percy, who in turn, looked to his sister for some sign of what to do next. Cassandra looked up and returned his gaze with just as much restrained uncertainty.

Percy sighed loudly and gently pressed his forehead against the wooden doors that lead out into the courtyard of the castle. He kept his head there for a brief moment as he worked to even out his erratic breathing.

_Is this it? Is it over now? Is this real?_

The gentle touch of a hand pressed lightly against his shoulder blade and lifted him out of his moment of brooding introspection. He turned to see his sister still waiting behind him. Silently, she delicately nodded to him in reassurance, though the slight veneer of panic still coated her expression. His eyes moved from Cassandra and across the remnants of Vox Machina before they stopped at Vax. Whatever victory he had won for his city and his family had come at a cost, the graveness of which was etched all over the rogue’s face.

“Thank you,” Percy said aloud, his tone appropriately bittersweet. His eyes still fixed on Vax, he continued. “Whatever I can do, it will be done. _I swear it._ ”

While the others nodded with tired half-smiles, Vax kept his head down. His eyes seemed lost in the folds of the cloak that covered the body in his arms. Percy reached over and placed his hand gently upon the cloak-wrapped body.

“She was… is as dear as family to me.”  
“I know,” Vax looked up at Percy with a mournful expression that betrayed a deeper sense of camaraderie. “Your city awaits.”

Percy bowed slightly at Vax and the others in his own subtly gracious way before he stepped out onto the polished whitestone steps of his family estate. The last bit of sun slowly sunk behind the mountains that left behind a faint amber stain on the horizon, cut with thin pillars of dense, grey smoke that bled into the changing twilight sky. Percy clutched at the lapels of his coat and braced himself for the deathly chill that haunted Whitestone, but relaxed as the breeze blew through.  The air was cool, but no unnaturally so.  Hundreds of yards away, the thunderous echoes of the rebellion that had polluted the air hours ago had calmed to relative quiet. To his surprise, the quiet was punctuated by – of all things – sudden bursts of applause. He slowly descended, and with each weary step, he could feel the gentle trickle of long buried hope slide down his cheek. He looked up, into the last bit of sun, and exhaled.


	10. The Phoenix Tree

The sound of footsteps ascending the path up towards the castle wrenched Percy out of his momentary abandon. He quickly blotted the tears from his cheeks with his dirtied ascot before puffing himself up a bit with his usual reserved façade. Cassandra hurried out from the foyer and wrapped herself around her brother’s arm, almost as if using him to shield herself. They looked at each other and shared between them an expression of cautious anticipation, before they stepped forward together to get a closer look. Behind them the remaining members of Vox Machina stood by and watched. The marchers appeared humanlike, numbered almost a hundred deep, varied in heights and widths, and brandished weapons and while adorned in humble armor marred in the stains and scratches of battle. A familiar figure – a thin, older man in muddied grey robes embroidered with a vibrant cobalt blue half cog – pushed his way to the front of pack. It was Keeper Yemmen.

“You there, Percival, Vox Machina! Are your wits about you?”  
**“Yes!”** Grog yelled out from the back of the party.  
“And what of the Briarwoods?”  
“They are no more,” Percy replied with confidence and relief.

Keeper Yemmen released his cobalt medallion and let it dangle from his neck as he raised his arms above his head with a celebratory exhale. The army behind him raised their weapons and shields into the air and cheered as well, bolstered by Percy’s proclamation. Unable to resist the lure of a good victory cry, Grog too lifted his warhammer and joined the chorus with his own deep, triumphant roar! Keeper Yemmen lowered his arms and scanned the faces before him but as he looked over those responsible, he noticed several of their number missing. He extended his thin, aged hands and clasped them around Percy’s, as his expression reverted from relief back to concern.

“There were more of you, were there not?“

Percy bowed his head and with slight apprehension, he replied. “Yes,” he paused briefly as he steeled himself for the rest of his response, “not all of us made it out.”

Cassandra once more began to tear up and pulled herself closer to her brother’s side. Keeper Yemmen frowned as he honed in on the bundle of blackened ivy colored fabric gathered in Vax’illdan’s arms. He observed the shape and his expression sank as he followed the shape down to the booted legs dangling from beneath it. He gently released Percy’s hands and once again gripped his holy symbol before he addressed the party.

“Come, you must all be tired. Let us return to the city, where you may rest while I see what we can do about those you’ve lost.” He turned back to those on the front lines and commanded. “Men, walk through, make sure the palace is clean.”

 **“No!”** Percy and Cassandra cried out in unison. Percy continued, “There is still a matter of… something beneath the castle that we have to deal with first. Tell your men to keep watch over the castle, keep it guarded. No one gets in without us knowing. No one!”  
“Yes, yes of course,” Keeper Yemmen obliged as he waved a few of his more experienced soldiers over. “Do as they command, and let no one enter!”

Several soldiers nodded obediently before they moved up the steps to post themselves at the main entrance, while others broke away and made their way to other entrances around the castle. Keeper Yemmen gave Percy a gentle pat on the shoulder and together, the party and the army of Whitestone began to march away from the castle grounds back into the city.

Together, they shuffled back southward back to the center of town in silence. While they had freed Whitestone from the clutches of The Whispered One and those who served him, the losses of their own dulled the shine of their victory. Though Scanlan was too exhausted to stir banter, he had never done well with silence. As he rode atop Trinket, he retrieved his lute, and took a few moments to gently retune it. Once tuned to his liking, he began to pluck a few chords that soon formed a slow, somber melody.

“New song?” Grog asked as he marched alongside.  
“No, a very old one, actually. Written by the White Duke himself.” He hummed along at first as they continued down the road back to the city. "I can't for the life of me recall the words though. It's about heroes though, and he sings about dolphins at some point. It's a strange dirge."  
“Hm.  Sing it to me when you remember, yeah?  I like dolphins!” Grog comforted Scanlan with as casual and gentle a pat on the back as he could give (the force of which still managed to jerk Scalan forward.)

Men, women, and children slowly emptied out of their meager, battered homes and rushed down the muddy roads past Vox Machina and the band of insurgents. Some moved together as families, while others wandered alone at first before finding fellow villagers to follow. They carried with them lanterns, lamps, and candles as night continued to creep over the city. Those who wandered out onto the streets did so instinctively, drawn to the center of town as if swept up in the urgent call of celebration. As the party neared the square, the sound of praiseful songs and cheers swelled. Percy and the others marveled at the numbers that had filled the streets. The ghost town they had entered was now vital and renewed by comparison, its populace now triple what they were initially met with less than a week prior. Keeper Yennen reached out to one young man who rushed by.

“Boy, where are you heading?”  
“To the Sun Tree! Pelor’s light, it’s a miracle! _It’s alive again!_ ”

The boy darted off down the road to join the other villagers who migrated towards the center of Whitestone. The party looked to Keeper Yemmen, whose eyes lit up with confusion and anticipation.

“Can it be?” Yemmen asked aloud.

Charged by curiosity over the boy’s claims, Yemmen hurried to the front of the in silence. The rest of the party looked to each other with mild confusion, then to Percy, for guidance. Percy looked back at the others, his expression just as perplexed as his companions.

“We’re right behind you!” Scanlan encouraged.  
“But of course,” Percy murmured as he and his sister hastened their pace to catch up with the Keeper. The others marched behind them as Scanlan had promised, and kept their eyes on the de Rolos.

It took only moments for Percy and Cassandra to catch up to Keeper Yemmen, who was now caught in an ever-growing crowd that had expanded well beyond the boundaries of the city square into the streets leading into it.

“Do you see it?” Cassandra asked her brother and the cleric. Both men arched their heads up and even stood upon the tips of their toes to look over the crowd.   Sure enough, there it stood in the center of town, surrounded by the citizens of Whitestone.  
“It’s magnificent,” Percy exclaimed, albeit in his usual restrained manner. Keeper Yemmen, however, was more exuberant in his reaction.  
_“By the gods!”_ he cried out as he pushed through the townsfolk, clutching his medallion close to his chest.

Percy looked back and saw his companions close in behind him. Cassandra continued to struggle with the view, that is, until she felt firm hands sturdily clasp around the sides of her torso. She panicked at first as she felt her body lift off of the ground.

“Here,” a deep, hesitant voice grumbled. Cassandra looked back quickly.

It was Grog, his face stern with reluctance as he lifted the de Rolo girl up high enough to see over the crowd. She smiled back uneasily at the barbarian, then quickly looked back at the tree. There it stood, The Sun Tree of Pelor, bathed in the reflected incandescence of dozens of manmade lights. Though several of its branches were still wrapped in filthy hempen rope, their strands were now masked by a bounty of freshly grown leaves that had somehow appeared over the course of their time beneath Castle Whitestone. Most peculiar to Percy and the rest of the Whitestone natives was the color of the leaves themselves. When leafed out, even in the autumn months, its branches were covered in bunches of deep verdant green more treasured in tone than any precious jade. Much to their amazement, the leaves were now a rich copper color that reflected the lantern lights like polished metal. When moved by breeze or curious townsfolk, the refraction on the leaves took on stunning new complexity. They flashed a complexity of color: brassy green-gold shifted into fiery crimson into a soft violet blue. Even the trunk had a strange vitality to it: its bark was no longer peeling or broken, and its color has returned to a healthy, even brown. The air too seemed to carry a particular pureness, despite the fallen and decomposing bodies of the Briarwoods’ armies that still littered the streets. Those gathered in the square just seemed at ease with the sight, even as twilight blackened the sky.

The crowds showed no sign of thinning; however, their caution relaxed into quiet celebration. Families cloistered together to hug and support each other tightly while taking in the sight. Children curiously inspected the bark of the tree as their elders looked on and pondered about the future in this new emancipation. Some even began to take up refuge with the tree and curled up beside its thick ancient roots. Vax too felt drawn to this tree, a tree that before had no real meaning to him other than the grizzly threat it welcomed he and his friends with on their first day in Whitestone. Recognition of the scent immediately hit Vax as he moved in closer. He’d known and cherished it for a long time. It was in the wind that blew through her hair, and the soft breath that escaped her lips when speaking to him. He gently kneeled down but made sure to keep Vex’s body close to his. He pressed his hand to the bark and remembered that just hours ago he had neared an end. Grief washed over him at first. Relief soon followed, thankful that he had finally opened up to her. An aged voice began to speak above him, and brought him out of his brief meditation.

“Are you familiar with the story of the Phoenix?”

Vax looked up and followed the familiar greyed robes up to Keeper Yemmen’s weathered face. Vax turned back to the trunk of the tree and hung his head low. He traced the texture of the bark down the roots embedded in the earth with his eyes before answering the old man.

“Can’t say that I am, Keeper.”  
“It was an ancient bird, a beast so beautiful that when slain, even the gods themselves mourned. And so it was decreed that the body of the creature was not to be buried, but to be burned in a pyre of divine flame. For days, embers continued to stir in the ashes. The embers burned so hot that they ignited the pyre once more, without tinder. From divine flame rose that very same bird: The Phoenix. Only instead of feathers, it flew through the heavens with plumage made from the fires of death itself!”

Vax was silent, still lost in the forms of the tree. Keeper Yemmen continued.

“Know that all lives lost today are treasured ones. None of this would have been possible without their sacrifices. We must mourn, but we must also endure. Tonight, this tree holds a much deeper significance: that even in the deepest darkness, light will find its way, no matter how long it takes. The Sun Tree is no longer just a symbol of life. It is a symbol of perseverance, fiery in its rebirth.”

Vax’s hand relaxed as he pulled it away from the tree trunk. He felt a resistance, sticky and slight, as he lifted his fingers off of the bark. He brought his glove closer to his face and looked at his fingertips, then back at the spot on the trunk where his hand had been. There, shining faintly in the reflection of lantern light, he saw it: a small patch of sap had begun to seep through the grooves in the bark. He brought his sap-dipped fingers closer to his face, and upon inspection, noticed tiny golden flecks swirl in the deep amber liquid. Drawn by natural curiosity, he carefully placed his fingers to his mouth and as the sap touched his lips, a distinct sweetness poured over his tongue. The taste was immediately recognizable as one that he had only come to know recently, and very briefly, but in its briefness, cherished deeply. He dropped his fingers away from his mouth, letting them hover for moment as he absorbed the lingering flavor. A single tear slipped down his cheek and slid along the fold of his smile line. For the first time in days, he found himself able to really smile.

“Come, let’s see what can be done for your sister,” Yemmen said as he patted the rogue firmly on his shoulder.

Vax let out an exhausted chuckle and kissed his fingertips before placing them back onto the sap-soaked spot on the bark. He held them there for a moment. Yemmen began to walk away; Vax lingered only a brief moment longer before he too rose to his feet, broke away from the tree, and followed. Scanlan slid off of Trinket as the bear followed his master and her brother as they broke away from the celebration.

Grog swung the Bag of Holding around and reached in to retrieve his beloved cask of ale. He lifted the cask under his arm, opened the tap, and began to release a stream of deep brown ale onto the grass at the base of the Sun Tree.

“This is for you, Princess!”

Grog lifted the cask and let the stream of ale pour across his chest, through his beard, and into his mouth before pouring more out for his fallen companion. Percy approached the Sun Tree too, though Cassandra lingered behind. She looked around, and anticipated the jeers and cutting glances from the townsfolk who knew of her time spent under the thrall of the Briarwoods. Instead, she found her people unified by this symbol of beauty. Her eyes began to water as she watched others comfort and heal each other around the Sun Tree. Percy, meanwhile, stayed focused on the tree itself. He gently stepped onto its roots and removed his leather glove. He reached up and gently pressed one of the iridescent copper leaves of the Sun Tree between his fingers. He held it there and took in its obvious preciousness. He shut his eyes and began to envision her as he remembered her best: tending to her garden outside of Greyskull Keep, smiling beneath a nearly cloudless sky among her flowers. The high noon sun shining down upon her, and gently kissing her faintly freckled skin.

“Thank you,” he whispered before he released the leaf.

He turned around and his eyes met Cassandra’s. They shared an awkward smile between each other, as much of a loving glance as they could manage through their fractured blue-blooded upbringing. Beneath the leaves of the Sun Tree, they hugged each other tightly and silently made a pact to not let each other go again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to everyone who has checked out this bit of fic. I know it was long, so if you made it all the way to the end, I appreciate it. 
> 
> Concrit always welcomed. Again, it's my first story in a LONG time (and I've been continuing to make edits to the previous chapters as I've posted up the later ones.)
> 
> Considering a sequel set in the AU of this story. If you're interested in it, lemme know. Either way, I have other stories I'd like to tell, just need to make time to tell them. Thanks again!

**Author's Note:**

> First, I'd like to thank Critical Role for even inspiring me to even decide to revisit fanfic -- I haven't written a story, let alone a fic, in years. 
> 
> Second, this is also a bit of an anniversary present to myself and the Critter community at large. I initially drafted this after finishing episode 34 ("Race to the Ziggurat", which if you haven't watched it yet, I highly suggest doing so before diving too deep into this as it contains some spoilers.) What began as a 5 page "What if?" last year eventually snowballed over the course of a year into the novella it became.


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